I have a Toshiba Satellite laptop, and my disk drive has stopped reading CDs. I don't know if it still reads DVDs or not, because I don't have any to try out and see. I only found out yesterday, and I hadn't tried playing any CDs in it for probably over a year, so I don't know when it stopped working.

I somehow got it to work for a little bit, but I have no idea how I managed it, and whatever it was didn't last very long and I couldn't make it work again today.

I get a loud whirring sound, like it's trying to start up my CD, but it stops a few seconds later. I've tried blowing out any dust that might have been in it, and checking for driver updates, but it didn't work. The laptop hasn't taken any damage that I know of, and I can't figure out why it's stopped working.


It's a Toshiba Satellite A205. Is there anyway I can repair or replace the disk drive? How much would that cost and how difficult would it be? Or would it be a better idea to just get an external CD/DVD drive?